City of Witches - Chapter 1161
**Chapter 1155**
**EP. 1161 #276: Prelude (9)**
**#1155**
1.
I pursued the truth even if it meant cutting myself in half.
Like all other witches, I sacrificed much and threw myself into the abyss in order to follow in the footsteps of the Great Mother.
It was not easy, but like the ascetics, I walked the path of thorns.
However, what Keter found when she reached the high position was not the next step.
It was a dizzying cliff.
“The laws of this world are like a game. Energy and particles have the smallest unit that cannot be divided, and the maximum speed is the speed of light, and there are clear limits that exist as numerical values, right? This kind of divine game setting is the law of the world.”
Witches modify and change this.
You can create particles that are smaller than the smallest unit particle, and you can implement light that is faster than light.
Modifying the settings of the world is the reason why witches are classified as transcendents.
However, Keter discovered it.
The absolute law underlying the world that cuts off the staircase of magic that cannot be touched no matter what number is written.
“I named it ‘System.’”
I only observed its existence and named it, but there was no way to grasp its exact identity.
I can only guess that it is the most fundamental law governing the entire universe and a huge administrator that moves fluidly.
Perhaps it is the being that humans call ‘God’.
The world from which the Witch of Creation escaped was originally a world without witches.
The world tolerated the existence of the newly born witch and watched as her mother reached the 32nd hierarchy.
I guess it was a kind of observation rather than generosity or compassion.
Because the system is, as its name suggests, a system that cannot distinguish between good and evil or consciousness.
But is it because I watched the Witch of Creation enough?
After observing the emergence of a power that should not have been allowed in the world, the ‘System’ began to move.
The moment Keter jumped over the wall and reached the 31st hierarchy, she felt her flesh and soul shatter.
It is not a magical effect.
What’s more, it’s not something physical.
It was a metaphysical force that even witches, who are pioneers in the unknown, could not describe.
The primitive and overwhelming power grabbed Keter, who was about to rise, and threw her away.
It was the system that imposed sanctions.
At first, it was a problem that I didn’t take seriously.
I was a little shocked, but I thought it was a problem that could be overcome.
Witches are foolish beings who try to catch up with the work of God.
Their king was the most stupid of all, so much so that he was not afraid or discouraged.
I burned and burned and burned.
I attacked and attacked and attacked.
I firmly believed that if I continued to explore endlessly, I would find a staircase that would reach transcendence at the end of the magnificent golden tower.
However, as time went on, I came to know only the absoluteness of the system.
This was not something that even witches could intervene in.
If the world’s settings are layers that have been piled up, this system is the world itself that supports all other layers from the lowest level.
By the time I realized that, the sanctions that the system had imposed on Keter were also taking effect.
By the time she realized this, the sanctions imposed on Kether by the system were beginning to take their toll. Just as she had lost her way a little earlier than Erelim.
Irradiated by high-level radiation, like a patient who appears to be fine for the first few days, Kether’s mind and body were gradually being eaten away by the sanctions that had not been considered a major problem at the time.
“It was an inevitable deterioration that even the high wisdom and transcendent magic could only delay.”
“……”
Erelim thought that the words coming out of Kether’s mouth were truly absurd.
Perhaps she wanted to believe that it was just a delusion caused by Kether’s confusion.
However, Erelim felt it too.
The vastness that had unfolded before her eyes after she had reached the 25th level was a little different from usual.
As Kether had said, it was a vague sense of limitation, a sense of a maze that made her feel as if she could not move forward at all.
In the end, this was as far as it went.
She had left her loved ones behind, struggled not to be consumed by boredom, and devoted her life to magic…
Unbeknownst to Erelim, a miserable ending had been predetermined by a backstory she had not even been aware of.
“Then what about Shinsoo? Is Shinsoo different?”
Erelim asks in a hollow voice.
It was just a question that her excellent reasoning had led her to ask by inertia, searching for a clue in the series of conversations.
It was a question as futile as a dead man’s whisper.
Kether shook her head.
“No, he too is a being that originated from me, so he cannot escape the system.”
In the depths of despair, Kether searched endlessly for a way around.
She sought ways to deceive the system’s censorship.
“But his child is different.”
All witches are beings born from the witch factor and the thread of destiny sown by their mother.
If that is denied by the system because it is of the other world, then a new life based on the system can be created from the beginning.
Not a witch born from the witch factor sown by the Witch of Creation, but a primordial witch who belongs to this world from the beginning.
To that end, she divided the stigma into small pieces and distributed them.
She altered the ritual to create Shinsoo in a more suitable state.
Even before he was born, she intervened directly with the prophecy agency to find the best possible mother.
All her actions worsened Kether’s physical condition, but she did not hesitate.
That was all that was left for Kether.
Her desperate efforts eventually bore fruit.
It was unexpected that Shinsoo was able to retain his consciousness, but he overcame all hardships and adversity to become the foundation for true transcendence.
There was no room for human emotion in this.
“I have fulfilled my mission.”
In front of Kether, who declared it firmly, Erelim felt that everything that made her up was crumbling away like an old, worn-out shell.
She had wanted to pioneer the path of the devil.
But in the end, it was nothing more than a pit with a truly absurd reason.
She had wanted to create a world for witches.
However, the order of Kether, which she had held with both love and hate, was nothing more than the self-satisfaction of a mechanical device caught in a cobweb, and the evil of mankind was just as Erelim had expected.
At the very end, she had gone to Kether to ask her what path to take in the future.
However, even Kether, whom she had believed would show her the way, was nothing more than a lost soul in the same situation.
But even Kether, who she had believed would show her the way, was in the same position as Mia, who had gone missing.
The body, which had fallen with the chair like an old tree, rolled on the cold marble.
She had merely lost her way a little earlier than Erelim.
Perhaps she had known of such an ending, and that was why she had always talked so easily about the ‘coexistence of humans and witches’.
If so, what was left in these empty hands?
Erelim looked at Kether.
She saw the broken Kether.
She was smiling as if she was satisfied with something.
It was not the same vain and empty smile as before.
It was the expression of someone who had found light in the endless darkness, alone.
She was moving away.
Her dim golden eyes, reminiscent of her past glory, did not contain Erelim.
Those who found their own way in the darkness, like Kether, did not care about those who were left behind.
As Kether had said, all witches were failures.
Erelim, too, was just one of the best of countless failures.
Looking back, it was such a shallow relationship.
“……”
She felt like an idiot.
The days when she had chewed on countless worries alone, following rules that she didn’t even know why she had to keep.
The days when she had barely understood that Kether’s legacy and concern had suddenly turned to a man who had appeared out of nowhere.
The days when she had wiped away her affection, which was gradually becoming stained with resentment and hatred, as a memory of the past, and had mistaken it for something precious.
It was boiling over.
Another emotion that could not be faded by the long years, that did not turn into boredom.
It would have been better if it had ended in ignorance.
If Erelim’s desperate prayer had ended in silence, it would have been more merciful.
She hated her.
But she did not hate her.
There was a deeper longing, respect, and love than that.
Kether had been like a mother to Erelim, like a sister, and at the same time, like a teacher.
Until now.
The new hatred was as deep and heavy as the love she had had.
Erelim’s lips quivered.
“Be in awe.”
The image of a witch who defined magic.
The word that expressed it all was majesty.
Everything Kether had shown Erelim was magic itself, and therefore, it was life.
Therefore, Erelim’s majesty was the same as Kether’s.
Pure white magical reflections shimmered in Erelim’s eyes like tears.
Dense magical particles filled the vast workshop, as if a slow-motion shot of water droplets dispersing.
The harmonious dance of the magical particles, as if a microcosm had been created under the pale moonlight, was breathtakingly dreamlike.
And apart from its beauty, it possessed enough power to kill a witch.
Kether did not raise her magic power.
She sat still without moving a finger in front of the magic that would have seemed like a piece of cake to her in her prime.
It was not that she was ignoring it.
It was not that she was laughing or frustrated.
“Blanche.”
Instead, she smiled quietly.
It was still a smile that she did not understand, but it was like the smile of a friend who had cast off a heavy burden and left the world.
Kether said,
“We cannot find the right answer.”
Erelim replied,
“I… found it.”
-Thud
With a sound like dry firewood snapping, the magic power that had been overflowing everywhere was absorbed into Erelim.
With a sound like dry firewood being snapped, the magical power that had been flowing everywhere was cut off from Erelim.
Witches’ City – Episode 1156